Lavrov’s plane stops in Casablanca again on its way back from Atlanta to Moscow

The Russian government plane that flew Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the United States landed at Casablanca’s Mohammed V International Airport in the early hours of Sunday, 1 November 2026, arriving from Atlanta, before continuing to Moscow, according to flight-tracking data.

The aircraft is an Ilyushin Il-96-300 registered RA-96018, belonging to Russia’s special flight squadron that carries senior officials. The data show it took off from Atlanta on Saturday, 31 October, landed in Casablanca at around 1:30 a.m. Moroccan time after a transatlantic flight of nearly eight hours, and left for Moscow’s Vnukovo airport less than two and a half hours later.

A second stop after the outbound leg

It was not the first time the same plane used Casablanca as a stopover on this trip: it had stopped at Mohammed V Airport for more than two hours on Thursday, 29 October, on the outbound Moscow–Atlanta flight, before crossing the Atlantic. Russian reports said the delegation’s flight from Moscow to Atlanta took 20 hours and 10 minutes, on a route that avoided the airspace of countries Moscow considers “unfriendly”.

Lavrov led his country’s delegation at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting held in Atlanta on 30–31 October 2026. No official meeting was announced during either stop in Casablanca.

Notable timing

The stopovers come at a particular diplomatic moment: the outbound flight coincided with the 30 October Security Council meeting at which Russia vetoed the US draft resolution on the Moroccan Sahara, while the United States vetoed a rival Russian draft. MINURSO’s mandate therefore expired without renewal, and the UN announced the start of its liquidation from 1 November — raising fresh questions about what really happened behind the scenes at the Security Council.